Brianna Morgan Popular Media Review EPSY 401 10/25/11 For the popular media assignment I chose to read

a book from the bibliography provided from the former classmate. I read the book The Alphabet War: A Story about Dyslexia by Diane Burton Robb. When I saw this book, and after I read it, it really made me think about not only dyslexia, but other types of learning disabilities, such as issues with reading and comprehension and speech and language disabilities. It forced me to think about just how big language development and use plays a role in peoples lives. In regards to this paper and class specifically, after reading this book, I thought about how important the different stages of language development are for children specifically. As shown with the main character in the story, language development, form is important for children to have in order for them to be successful in school and build on their skills in order to learn more skills such as how to recognize letters, put letters together to form words and learn to read. In the story, the main character, Andrew, who suffered from dyslexia, this affected his further development in school. It also showed me the importance of the foundations of language development. Based on what we have discussed in class, it could be seen that Andrew had language function; he could communicate with others outwardly and could express himself verbally. He just had a hard time with his language form and putting together letters and words in his head in an effort to recognize the letters and read words. His language form did not really hinder his outward communication. In the story Andrew had difficulty with phonology, morphology, and syntax. As he progressed from kindergarten to fourth grade, each of these parts of language got more difficult for him as

they built on each other. This made the task of reading even more difficult for Andrew because he had not mastered the basics of phonology first, he had trouble with the differences between a d and a b, and he also had trouble with understanding the difference between the words to and two. When it came to learning the morphology of words, Andrew had trouble understanding that the sounds of the letters c-a-t made the word cat. Last, when it came to syntax, Andrew did not understand the words are combined to form phrases and then sentences. This all lead to his difficulty with trying to learn how to read. Andrew was able to work through his issues with his dyslexia when his teachers provided interventions for him and went from a prescriptive style of teaching to more of a descriptive style of teaching that helped to meet his needs and builds off of his other strengths. Learning what I have in this course, and then reading this story helped me to better understand what it means to have dyslexia and how it affects children. Learning about the different parts of language makes it easier to understand how dyslexia works.